14.11.09 - South Korea - Author: asia news ia - Comments: (0)
Asianewsia - 15 nov 2009 - Korea, The authorities reported the first case in the nation of a teenager who took Tamiflu and injured himself by jumping from a building, allegedly under the hallucinogenic effect of the flu medicine, Yonhap News Agency reported on Saturday.
A 14-year-old teenager, identified as Lee, was discovered with fracture in his bones and head injuries on October 30 in Gyeonggi Province at the entrance of his apartment.
The day before, the boy developed high fever and was prescribed with Tamiflu at a hospital. He came back home, took the medicine and went to bed.
The boy apparently jumped from the six-floor window of his apartment later. But he didn’t remember anything about the incident.
In 2005 and 2007 in Japan, there were reports that teenagers who took Tamiflu threw themselves from a building, apparently under the influence of hallucination, Yonhap said.
14.11.09 - Uncategorized - Author: asia news ia - Comments: (0)
Asianewsia - 14 nov 2009. A significant amount of frozen water has been found on the moon, the united states space agency said on Friday heralding a giant leap forward in space exploration and hopes of a permanent lunar base.
“Preliminary data from a dramatic experiment on the moon indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater,” NASA said in a statement.
“The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon,” it added, as ecstatic scientists celebrated the landmark discovery.
“Yes indeed we found water and we did not find only a little bit but a significant amount,” said Anthony Colaprete, project scientist and principal investigator for the 79-million-dollar LCROSS mission.
The data was found after NASA sent two spacecraft crashing into the lunar surface last month to probe Earth’s nearest neighbor for water.
One rocket slammed into the Cabeus crater, near the lunar southern pole, at around 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) per hour.
The rocket was followed four minutes later by a spacecraft equipped with cameras to record the initial impact, which sent a huge plume of material billowing up from the bottom of the crater, untouched by sunlight for billions of years.
“In the 20-30-meter (66- to 100-foot) crater we found maybe about a dozen, at least, two-gallon buckets of water. This is an initial result,” Colaprete told reporters.
“Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact.
“The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water,” Colaprete said.
“It’s very exciting, it is painting a new image of the moon,” said Gregory Deloy of the University of California, hailing it as “an extraordinary discovery.”
He theorized that “one of the possible source of water is a comet.”
“We’re unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and, by extension, the solar system,” said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington.
Colaprete said any lunar water would have to be extracted and purified before it could be used for drinking.
14.10.09 - Philippines - Author: asia news ia - Comments: (0)
Tags: storm
The Philippines will be seeking at least $1 billion from international donors for reconstruction after devastating back-to-back storms highlighted the country’s vulnerability to climate change report in Wednesday.
At least 712 people were killed and 7 million affected, while the cost of damage to crops and fisheries was estimated at $396 million. Another $114 million of infrastructure was damaged.
The government said the donor conference may take place in late November or early December, after the U.N. and the World Bank assess total damage from the storms.
The Philippines was looking for grants to fund reconstruction, followed by concessional loans and commercial borrowings. The Philippine reconstruction commission may recommend issuing of special bonds to fund the project, Arroyo said.
Damage caused by the storms may shave 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points from the country’s gross domestic product, which is projected to grow between 0.8 percent and 1.8 percent this year.
Remittances from Filipinos working abroad, projected to rise 4 percent this year to $17.1 billion, could counter the losses. The money sent home by 10 million overseas workers is the driving force behind domestic spending, which is the backbone of the economy.
14.10.09 - Africa, Australia, Indonesia - Author: asia news ia - Comments: (0)
Sirens wailed continue crowds fled across Indian Ocean nations Wednesday in a mass drill simulating a giant tsunami similar to the 2004 disaster.
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and the Japan Meteorological Agency sent out bulletins for a 9.2-magnitude quake and tsunami.
The exercise was aimed at testing warning systems and preparedness in nations in Asia, Australasia, the Middle East and Africa.
Hundreds of people including school children ran from the coast in the Indonesian province of Aceh, the area worst hit by the 2004 tsunami.
Red Cross volunteers, police and soldiers helped people smeared with mud and fake blood into ambulances which carried them away from the coastline.
But for many, the drill only served to revive horrific memories of the real thing.
“This sort of exercise is useful for letting me know if a tsunami strikes. But the sirens and crowds make me panic, they remind me of the 2004 tsunami,” said Bachtiar, a resident of the Acehnese town of Ulee Lheue.
Another resident, 20-year-old Risnawati, said Acehnese needed no reminding of a tsunami’s destructive power.
“Acehnese already know how to save their life if a tsunami strikes. They will automatically run to higher ground if there are signs of a tsunami, like receding water,” she said.
01.10.09 - Ethiopia - Author: asia news ia - Comments: (0)
Facts about Ardi
Ardi was found in Ethiopia’s Afar Rift, where many fossils of ancient plants and animals have been discovered.
Findings near the skeleton indicate that at the time it was a wooded environment.
Fossils of 29 species of birds and 20 species of small mammals were found at the site.
Geologist Giday WoldeGabriel of Los Alamos National Laboratory was able to use volcanic layers above and
below the fossil to date it to 4.4 million years ago.
Ardi’s upper canine teeth are more like the stubby ones of modern humans than the long, sharp, pointed ones of male chimpanzees
and most other primates. An analysis of the tooth enamel suggests a diverse diet,
including fruit and other woodland-based foods such as nuts and leaves.
Paleoanthropologist Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo reported that Ardi’s face had a projecting muzzle,
giving her an ape-like appearance. But it didn’t thrust forward quite as much as the lower faces of modern
African apes do. Some features of her skull, such as the ridge above the eye socket, are quite different from
those of chimpanzees. The details of the bottom of the skull, where nerves and blood vessels enter the brain,
indicate that Ardi’s brain was positioned in a way similar to modern humans, possibly suggesting that the hominid
brain may have been already poised to expand areas involving aspects of visual and spatial perception.
Ardi’s hand and wrist were a mix of primitive traits and a few new ones, but they don’t include the hallmark
traits of the modern tree-hanging, knuckle-walking chimps and gorillas. She had relatively short palms and
fingers which were flexible, allowing her to support her body weight on her palms while moving along tree branches,
but she had to be a careful climber because she lacked the anatomical features that allow modern-day African apes to swing,
hang and easily move through the trees.
The pelvis and hip show the gluteal muscles were positioned so she could walk upright.
Her feet were rigid enough for walking but still had a grasping big toe for use in climbing.
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Scientists learn about “Ardi,” a hominid who lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia.
The 110-pound, 4-foot female roamed forests a million years before the famous Lucy, long studied as the earliest skeleton of a human ancestor.
This older skeleton reverses the common wisdom of human evolution.
Rather than humans evolving from an ancient chimp-like creature, the new find provides evidence that chimps and
humans evolved from some long-ago common ancestor but each evolved and changed separately along the way.
The lines that evolved into modern humans and living apes probably shared an ancestor 6 million to 7 million years ago.
But Ardi has many traits that do not appear in modern-day African apes, leading to the conclusion that the apes evolved extensively
since we shared that last common ancestor.
A study of Ardi, under way since the first bones were discovered in 1994, indicates the species lived in the woodlands
and could climb on all fours along tree branches, but the development of their arms and legs indicates they didn’t spend much time in the trees.
And they could walk upright, on two legs, when on the ground.
“This is one of the most important discoveries for the study of human evolution. “It is relatively complete in that it preserves head, hands, feet and some critical parts in between.
It represents a genus plausibly ancestral to Australopithecus itself ancestral to our genus Homo.
Scientists assembled the skeleton from 125 pieces.
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01.10.09 - China - Author: asia news ia - Comments: (0)
China celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, floats and nuclear-capable missiles, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism.
The two hour-parade of picture-perfect soldiers, tanks and missiles, floats and 100,000 well-drilled civilians was a proud moment for many Chinese citizens, as reporters Ben Blanchard and Lucy Hornby write.
The weather was perfect too, with the Chinese air force deploying a range of chemicals and technology to clear Beijing’s smoggy air.
Chinese man give comment about China:
I understand anti-Americanism, because America has DONE many things to many people all over the world, and has the power to still DO many more things, but I don’t understand anti-China media.
I know some people don’t like communism, or one-party rule, or an authoritarian government, or state influenced media, but China is not trying to make other people accept or live under these conditions.
So, why? I don’t understand why the English speaking world is so antagonistic and negative about China. What’s it to you? I am Chinese man.
01.10.09 - Indonesia - Author: asia news ia - Comments: (0)
More than 500 people were killed and thousands more were feared to be trapped under rubble following Wednesday’s devastating earthquake off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island.
Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati told a news conference Thursday that the government has approved 250 billion rupiah (about $26 million) in cash aid for victims of the quake, which she estimated will be enough for two months of relief operations.
She also said the devastation will impact the state budget and the national economy.
As rescue efforts were under way early Thursday, another powerful earthquake shook western Indonesia, about 180 miles from Wednesday’s epicenter, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It’s unclear whether that quake caused additional damage.
Wednesday’s earthquake had a magnitude of 7.6, according to the geological survey. The quake was felt as far as Bangkok, about 1,000 miles away.
Most of the deaths were in Padang, a city of about 750,000 on Sumatra’s western coast and about 30 miles from the quake’s epicenter.
The largest public hospital in the city, was overrun with injured and the dead. The hospital itself was damaged during quake, forcing medics to work outside in makeshift tents, where the floors were covered with a mix of bloody swabs, discarded syringes and mud from the intermittent rain. On the street outside the hospital, 19 yellow body bags were laid out.
Besides the expected casualties in Padang, more people were suspected to have died in Pariaman, a rural town of about 80,000 people that was closest to the epicenter, north of Padang. Officials received reports of buildings destroyed in Pariaman, and road access to the town was cut off by landslides triggered by the earthquake.
01.10.09 - Africa - Author: asia news ia - Comments: (0)
Rural Zimbabweans learn to use minimum-tillage farming methods to feed themselves. A new study estimates that global climate change will be especially hard on African agriculture.
“Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate changes,” notes a new study from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) that looks at how climate change will affect food production around the world by 2050.
“Developing countries are likely to be hardest hit by climate change and will suffer bigger declines in crop yields,” said Gerald Nelson, lead author of the study and an IFPRI research fellow, in a conference call with journalists on Tuesday.
Temperatures will rise to “intolerable levels” for some plants, he noted, while higher temperatures will encourage proliferation of weeds, insects, and crop diseases.
And those negatives won’t necessarily be offset by an increase in carbon dioxide concentrations. In the laboratory, plants generally respond favorably to higher levels of CO2, but the story is different in farm fields. There, higher concentrations can cause more insect damage.
29.09.09 - Australia - Author: asia news ia - Comments: (0)
Tags: Australia
Blind fish to diving beetles around 400 need your help to find a name. More than 800 species ranging from blind fish to diving beetles have been discovered in outback Australia.
The unnamed animals are among 850 new species found in a four-year study. The species found include insects, crustaceans, spiders and worms, and are only the
tip of the iceberg, scientists say.
“Up to five times more species could still be left undiscovered,” scientists said.
Most of the critters are blind and live in subterranean water, caves and micro-caverns.
29.09.09 - Philippines - Author: asia news ia - Comments: (0)
Tags: Philippines, Storm Ketsana
Thailand’s Meteorological Department on Tuesday warned residents in 18 provinces of heavy rains and flash floods as tropical storm Ketsana is expected to reach the country’s northeast region Wednesday.
Philippine
On Tuesday morning, the Philippine government confirmed a total of 240 people were dead, nearly 40 people were still missing and 1.87 million affected
following devastating floods and landslides in Luzon caused by Ketsana, Xinhua reported.
The number of deaths from Tropical Storm Ketsana increased to 140, plus 32 missing with many more expected to be confirmed as rescue workers and medical
teams continue to reach flooded areas.
The extent of the destruction, and the scale of the clean up job which remains to be carried out, became clear as residents emerged from the roofs and upper
floors of their home where some had been stranded for as long as 48 hours.
Foreign governments promised aid for he victims of the disaster and health workers hurried to anticipate outbreaks of infectious disease, as the city of 12
million people struggled to clean up the mud and water dumped by the worst storm to hit the area in a generation.
“We are concentrating on massive relief operations, [but] the system is overwhelmed, local government units are overwhelmed,” said Anthony Golez, the head of
the National Disaster Coordinating Council, “Our assets and people are spread too thinly.”